WoW adds voice chat
Friday, August 17th, 2007The newest patch to the popular World of Warcraft will include integrated voice chat. This will provide a big change to the way players with socially interact with each other.
It’s true that players have long used 3rd party applications to receive what many believed to be a missing features. I believe that this was usually done with people that were in a raid or guild, meaning there is a good chance you already knew them. It will be very diffierent when everyone can voice chat with everyone else - until you mute them.
Will people be more polite or cautious when they communicate with strangers? Will people be apprehensive to voice chat as it may remove their anonymity? What are the new etiquettes that will emerge? (Certainly, I won’t say “LFG lvl56 LBRS pst!”) Will it freak people out to hear my voice when they are playing with a female gnome mage?
Only time will tell, but I’m sure it will have an effect.
In game terms it makes total sense of course. It’s much better to “say” you being attacked, instead of tying “Supermage! I do believe I see an Ogre heading our way!” - I’ve died many times in the middle of typing something and I have no doubt this feature will help.
They updated other communication management features … I will look at those once the patch goes live.
WoW patch notes here
